GW4VXE's Station Diary

Well it's my birthday! I was saying to Brian WB4IT last night that I've been licensed for 43 years now (I just checked and my first day on the air was 16th Feb 1983). I think I find it even more fascinating than I did then....

It's interesting being able to monitor 2m and 6m FT8 at the same time, one of the best things I did last year! For example this morning, I noticed a quick meteor burst on 2m at 0925z of F8PKC (JN38) while over on 6m, at 0924:45z the same burst produced F1PBZ (JN26) and G7TQB (JO00). Tying the two bands together make it clear that the propagation for all the decodes was meteor scatter, but individually, I don't think I would have known, particularly for G7TQB - I'd have assumed aircraft scatter (which of course, it could still be, but it seems unlikely).

Noticed that the 40m dipole was down on receive this afternoon, so dropped it down and cleaned the coax/centre connection. Also noticed that it may have been shorting against the mast, so I've insulated the mast, so if there's a strong westerly and the dipole centre hits the mast, hopefully the problem won't recur.

Higher bands poor again this evening. Heard Jim KF7E from Arizona on 17m around 2030z. We just about scraped a QSO. He was stronger on the dipole that the vertical, but didn't seem to copy me any better on that aerial. Jim said he had power line noise, which won't have helped.